POSTED BY Veronica LaClair
In 2009 Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were convicted, by an Italian court, of the gruesome stabbing murder of Knox’s roommate, Meredith Kercher. In 2011 the two were acquitted of Kercher’s murder due to a lack of evidence, after being in custody for nearly four years. The Italian Supreme Court, in March 2013, determined that the jury acquitted Knox and Sollecito without considering all the evidence and with discrepant testimonies. The court therefore issued an order for a new trial.
At the conclusion of the new trial in January of 2014 Knox and Sollecito were found, for a second time, guilty of Kercher’s murder. Knox was sentenced to 28 years and six months in prison, while Sollecito received a 25 year sentence. Knox and Sollecito are planning to appeal and until a final decision has been handed down by the court it is unlikely that prosecutors will file extradition papers to have Knox brought back to Italy.
Discussion has recently sparked about Knox and what her future will hold and how the end of the Amanda Knox Story will be written. Many are confused with the Italian court’s recent decision, as most of the evidence and testimony used in the new trial was the same as that used in the original trial – which lead to an acquittal. With confusion comes questions, and these questions are leading many individuals to look more closely at what is really going on with the Knox case and its trial evidence.
A new concern has been stirred up in the mist of the Knox case, which is whether or not the police and criminal prosecutors are placing too much faith and reliance on forensic evidence and forensic testimony. It has long been said in reference to evidence, that: it is what it is. Meaning that the evidence doesn’t lie, and the evidence doesn’t change. The problem is that the interpretation of such evidence can be misread and misconstrued when scientists and forensic experts push the boundaries of such evidence too far.
This has been seen in many cases including Mayfield and Peterson. In the Mayfield case authorities were convinced a fingerprint match placed a United States citizen at the heart of the Madrid bombing, when in actuality the fingerprint match was a fluke and belonged to another individual altogether. Moreover, in the Peterson case the jury returned a guilty verdict which was later changed by the court to a grant of a new trial when it was discovered the State’s expert witness had lied about his credentials before his damning bloodstain pattern analysis testimony.
There is an impression that such misrepresentation and overreliance has occurred in the Knox case in reference to the DNA evidence supposedly linking Knox to the murder. Like most forensic evidence there is a depth and limit to its reliability, and it appears that prosecutors might have used evidence that was beyond the threshold of validity and reliability simply because it indicated a match to Know.
An analogous issue has occurred in the past when fingerprints were considered to be a match when seven individual indicators were found to be similar between two samples. However, it is now known that the similarities need to be in the high teens for fingerprints to be considered a possible match. With this analogy in mind, it would seem as though the Knox DNA evidence equated to a seven point finger print match, when a sixteen point match is truly needed in order to satisfy tests and concerns of reliability.
The forensic technology that the criminal justice system relies so heavily on has come under attack in recent years. Forensic science itself is facing a remodeling of its core tenants of reliability and validity, as the field as a whole tries to become more scientifically based. However, it is important that the court be made aware that scientists, now with advances in technology readily available to them, have the ability to make evidence more then what it is by pushing the bounds of reliability before proper testing has been conducted. Until such research and testing can be done it is better to let the evidence speak for itself rather than letting scientist put incriminating words in its mouth.
